Time to Get Serious

According to my watch, I have exactly 22 days, four hours, 14 minutes and 23 seconds before 2 p.m. on June 10, when my House Master will hand me my diploma and then politely show me out the door of this fine institution. I also have exactly one exam between now and then, which means that three of those 532 hours will be spent in Harvard Hall 104, pen in hand, completing my final academic obligation as a student. I don’t plan to study for the exam, so that leaves a full 529 hours for me.

Bear with me here. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the average life expectancy for a 22-year-old of vigorous health is 55.5 more years. That’s 20,257 days or 486,180 hours. (I used a calculator for this part.) Assuming that I sleep for eight hours a night and that I work a nine-to-five job (yeah, you’re right, it’ll probably be less sleep and more work…), I’m left with only 162,060 hours of “free time”—that’s a total of 6,752 days.

Now, I live in Los Angeles, where the commuting time alone lops off another 1,688 days of that total. That gives me just under 5,000 days in which to spend time with my friends, pursue hobbies, raise a family, play my guitar, go out for drinks, surf the Internet, check my e-mail, visit the doctor, read a book…not to mention just relaxing. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t just a bit frightened by these calculations.

Don’t think that I’m morbid—I’m just trying to do a little bit of advanced planning here. My mother’s been bugging me about my poor time management for years, and it’s only now that the so-called “best years of my life” have been reduced to a mere tally of hours that I’m beginning to see what she meant. It’s the time of year where pollen and nostalgia are in the air, and it’s hard not to get a bit teary-eyed from both. I was given 1,080 days as a Harvard student—how well did I spend them?

How well did I spend them? God, that’s such a Harvard way of looking at the whole thing, isn’t it? Listen to me! “I have X hours. How can I squeeze the most out of each one so that no time is wasted?” Productivity! Efficiency!

That shouldn’t be the point of college. I mean, even the admissions officers tell you that the time you spend chatting with your friends—not the hours you spend in class—constitutes the most important education you get at Harvard. I am reminded of all those times I said, “Hey, man, I’d love to come [insert fun activity with friends here] with you guys, but I’ve got to study for this quiz…” Too often, I’ve been a slave to my Timex, and at a place like Harvard, it sure is easy to fall into that trap.

Not to mention the equally alluring trap of résumé building. Can you believe that there’s a Consulting Club on campus? I almost spit out my spaghetti when I heard some folks talking about it at the dinner table the other day. Look, I’ve got a lot of friends who are neophyte consultants, and more power to them—they’re good people and they’re going to be doing good things for the economy come September. But let’s keep the McKinsey thing a post-college phenomenon, ok?

Underclasspeople: you’re going to spend plenty of time recruiting as a senior. For Pete’s sake, don’t waste your best hours as a sophomore and a junior practicing to wear a suit and tie. Instead, go out with your friends. Play football by the river. Read Finnegan’s Wake. Write a limerick. Join a sports team. Make your bed. Visit an art museum. Get wasted. Go make friends with the girl behind the counter at Starbucks. I dunno—do something, but do it because it’s fun, or because you’re passionate about it, or because you’ve never done it before. Not because it’ll help you get a job.

So why all the calculations? Why worry about how much time is left? Yes, it’s a bit obsessive, but I crunched the numbers to make a point about choice. To treat time like a commodity is one thing. To know that it’s precious is another thing entirely. When you choose to treat time like a commodity, you end up valuing the things you do only as “experiences” to pad a CV. But the alternative is to realize that a gleefully chosen nap is time well-spent, not a guilty pleasure. Three-hour dinners are more important than three-hour finals. A great night out with friends is always worth the hangover.

The bottom line is this: We Harvard kids have a tendency to take ourselves too seriously, and the whole system—college admissions, job applications and so on—seems designed to help us stay that way. But ultimately we are in control—and therefore responsible—for choosing how we use our time, either in the frivolous pursuit of seriousness or in the serious pursuit of frivolity. You only have 20,257 days left to enjoy yourself. I suggest getting started.

Christopher W. Snyder ’04 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears regularly.